The Ringer NFL Show - Will Dak Commit Fewer INTs in 2023? Who Has the Most Dangerous Offense in the NFC? | Extra Point Taken

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Dak Prescott tied for the most interceptions in the league last season despite playing only 12 games. Will that number be less with Mike McCarthy calling plays? Plus, who has the most dangerous offense in the NFC? Is it the Eagles or a team from a different division? With the Ravens having so many moving parts on offense this offseason, are they looking at a year of transition? Plus, Ben is buying the hype on one rookie QB. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Hosts: Ben Solak and Sheil Kapadia Producer: Cliff Augustin Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Music Composed By: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Right now on the ringer game on feet and all throughout the entire month of August, the East Coast bias boys are getting you ready to bet the NFL this season. We're going through each and every single division and revealing our favorite futures, predicting division winners, and even giving you some award winners. Do we think the Kansas City Chiefs will repeat or will they be the throne? Tune in now to find out on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Extra Point Taking, Shield Kapadia here, alongside Benjamin Solack, who looks like he is in like November week 10 form.

The man is wearing like a legit hoodie, not a lightweight hoodie with the hood on. He just said he's going to grab a coffee. We're recording on Monday evening. I don't know what type of hours. This man is keeping Benjamin Solek, what's going on? I just realized as you were doing that description that the pod's on video now, follow the ringer NFL on TikTok, follow the ringer NFL on Instagram, and that this appearance might happen and so I might need to drop the hood and look a little bit less like an Eskimo

in the tundra here. Yeah, no, it rained all day at Browns practice, all right? And the Browns are very oriented on playing tough football and being ready for the elements, which apparently extends to the media. I tried to stand under a tent at one point. The man in charge of watching the tent told me very strongly that didn't belong in the tent and how to get out from the tent. I remembered I had an umbrella in my car about 20 minutes in practice. At that point, the ship had sailed. There was nothing to be recovered. I was soaked to the bone. And so I went, I got that umbrella. And I stood under it. And it is hard to feel like a serious person when you are standing under an umbrella very wet. You feel like a joke. So that was my day

at Cleveland Brown's practice. Listen, you're grinding away. You're getting ready for the season. It is funny when you mentioned that about their rules. Different NFL head coaches have different rules for what reporters, like what they can do on the sideline. Andy Reid is notorious. He sees everything. If there's a camera person taking a knee, he yells at him. I know this used to be, you couldn't be drinking water on the sideline if you were a reporter because he didn't want like the players to see. This was real. Back in the day at Lehigh University, I don't know if he's still that strict. Andy Reid is anti-hydration. Well, at the time, he's like, I don't want my players to see you was over there standing on the sideline, you know, pounding water.

So we're out here trying to practice. And then others, I remember Chip Kelly, he just completely, he's just like, they don't exist. They can do whatever they want as long as they don't get an hour away. So it really depends on the coach. So that's funny that they told you to stand out there. Well, you look good. You made it through the elements. You're ready to pod.

Here's what we're doing. Bill cozy. Teams are between like, I don't know, seven and 10 to 12. practice is in here at training camp. And so we're seeing a lot of training camp preseason narratives start to form. And so we we scoured the internet as one does. We looked at various reporting. We looked at various takes and said, what are some narratives taking shape here? And do we buy them? Do we think they're legit? Do we think they're nonsense? How do we feel about them as we look ahead? So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to do six of those. And then you're going to hit us

with an extra point taken with one that you found as well. So let's do. Let's start with this one, Ben. I actually saw this one because you retweeted it. And storyline number one, the Cowboys have a plan to cut down on Dak Prescott's interceptions. This was a good story by Jory Epstein of Yahoo Sports. Story. The basic idea. Yeah, good, good story, good reporting.

The basic idea is that the Cowboys are moving to a more West Coast offense, West Coast offense principles that will better, you know, coordinate Dak Prescott's drops, his footwork with the wide receivers routes. You know, generally speaking, West Coast offense means more precise routes by the wide receivers and added emphasis on timing. Quotes in there from Brian Schottenheimer from C.D. Lamb, basically they believe that this will bolster ball security and decisiveness.

This will get quarterbacks and wide receivers on the same page. We all know Dak Prescott last year, 3.8% interception rate. That ranked 33 out of 30. 33 starters. Ben Solect, how do you feel about this storyline that this new offense with Brian Schottenheimer and Mike McCarthy, Dak Prescott is calling it the Texas Coast offense, is going to help the quarterbacks and the wide receivers be on the same page and cut down on interceptions in the 2023 season. Firstly, no one's allowed to name systems anymore. We got, we got, we have a

series, we have great systems. West Coast, great name. Air raid. great name. Earhart Perkins doesn't have it anymore, whatever. Eric Correale, great name. No more naming systems, right? Like even like the Shanahan-McVeigh offense, which is like barely West Coast at this point, we just call it the Shanahan-McVe version of the West Coast offense. Nobody gets to name anything. None of you are trusted. Texas Coast terrible. Number one. Number two. I think that like, so the piece itself is very interesting because Jory got a lot of really good quotes on how a wide receiver's role changes, even when it might not like be very obvious and how a quarterback's job changes, even when it might not be very obvious, as a system

changes, right? Like, we're still running curl routes and slants and, and in cuts and comebacks and, like, all the rounds we know from Madden, but the way that we run them is going to change a little bit. That's an extremely interesting and fun thing, right? C.D. Lamb has a great quote in that piece where he's like, because I know how many steps Prescott's taking in the drop, I'm, like, at first it slowed, it slowed me down, but now it's letting me do things faster. Like now, like the perspective means I like better understand what he's going to need me to do and now it's going to let us use our speed a little bit better. Like there's, there's a lot of like really illustrative quotes in there.

Michael Gallup talking about like how he, his experience in the last five years is really cool. The key point in the piece that Jory makes right at the top is it was not that the Cowboys offensive coaching staff sat down and said, man, DAC through 15 and her. receptions last year. How are we going to make him throw less picks? I know we'll have the wide receivers count how many steps he takes. Instead it was, we're moving to the Mike McCarthy offense. This is moving away from Kellan Moore, where the wide receivers had a lot more flexibility, option routes, their own timing, moving to a Mike McCarthy offense where the wide receivers don't have that flexibility. It's much more rigid. And a result of that move, we think that in that shift,

in that transition, we're really going to be able to highlight ball security and avoiding interceptions and operating with precision. So, like, because if you go back and you look at DAC's interceptions last season, you cannot argue that the number one issue was that, like, the wide receivers were like super late in their breaks and the timing was super off. It was a lot of like forcing tight windows and then like bad bounces of the ball, bad hands, so on and so forth. It's a lot of stuff that's just going to drop inherently. So I think it's a mistake to be like, Dak had 15 picks, Dak has broken,

this is going to fix him. That linear storyline is not the one that that joy is writing. And I think that that's a super big oversimplification. But it is an interesting change for the Cowboys offense and one of the results of the consequences of it should be that it's a little bit easier

for Dak to avoid some of those tight windows, avoid some of those bad bounces and get the interceptions number down. Yeah, I just wonder, their whole off season to me has felt So, like, every time I read or learn more about what the Cowboys are saying or thinking, I just wonder if they've identified the right issues, whether there's an overreaction, where there's a, it wasn't like that broken, how much are you actually trying to fix type angle to it?

And, you know, just, just Dak Prescott's interceptions even. Like, I look at it and it's like, this was probably going to just self-correct. Like, Dak Prescott had a lot of bad luck last year. I mean, if you just look at him historically, 2021, he was better than league average in terms of interception rate. 2020 is injured. 2019, better than league average. 2018, better than league average.

The interceptions have not been a major problem for Zach Prescott. They were a problem last year. That was one season. Like you said, there's definitely some flukiness there, and there's always going to be a small sample type thing with football statistics. But I was even looking, if you look at his whole career from 2016 to 2021, Ben, 30 quarterbacks during that span have thrown at least 1,500 passes. Five of them had a better interception rate than Dak Prescott.

That was Aaron Rogers, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Patrick Mahomes, and Alex Smith. This just hasn't been a major issue in his career. Again, an issue last year, that's fine. But I don't know that some of these changes are going to fix that. Now, you made the right point. They're not coming out saying, hey, we're going to run more West Coast offense because we think it's going to cut down interceptions. they're saying we're going to run more West Coast offense

because that's what Mike McCarthy wants to do. That's what Brian Schottenheimer wants to do. They think it's going to be better and they think a result is going to be fewer interceptions. And also, I would say, like you made the point that Prescott throws into a lot of tight windows. Is that a negative or positive, you could argue? I mean, it's all things of quarterbacking

are neither negatives nor positives. They're coins with two sides. Which is not a helpful thing for an analyst to say. Like, nothing is actually good. bad. But that's kind of it, right? Matthew Stafford, 2020, what year is it? 2023? Matthew Stafford, 2021, throwing in a tight windows, the coolest thing in the world, the Rams running the Super Bowl. 2020, guess who was leading the league in interceptions before he got hurt? Matthew Stafford, baby. Like, it's all edges, two edges to a sword.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think our bottom line here is probably pretty similar. I think Dak Prescott's going to throw fewer interceptions this year. Maybe the change. scheme will have some effect on that. I think if they kept the exact same scheme as last year and Kellyn Moore was the offensive coordinator, I still think he would have thrown a few interceptions this year than last year. That's just the law of, you know, bigger samples. And here's the, here's the other thing to watch out for in Dallas. Okay, we're changing the system. We're going to be precise. Three step and out, five step and out, five step hitching out, wide receiver, break at seven, break at nine, break at 14, like precision. Precision got a little tiring in Green Bay. Okay. There's a

young man up there by the name of Aaron Rogers, who said, I'm very good at this quarterbacking thing. If I need to take an extra hitch, I'd like to take an extra hitch because I know what I'm doing. And there was a conflict there, right? And a huge drop-off in Rogers play because of some of the disagreement, because of some of that tension. That came at the end of a long time for Green Bay of running a lot of that precision stuff, right? Mike McCarthy had been there for forever. Dallas, like C.D. Lamb, Doc Prescott, Michael Gallup, they were running the loosey-goosey stuff last year, right? And so everything's well and good in August.

You're installing it. You love the timing. You get to September, and that passing game is not working super well. You're two-and-two. Guess what you're starting receiving, your star quarterbacker and start asking for. Hey, we're really good at this. Can we just like loosen this up a little bit? And now you start to do middle grounds, right? Now you start to give a little, take a little. You say, yeah, Dak, don't worry about it. Yeah, you can three-step and hitch if you want. And then DAC three-steps and hitches on a third down.

And completion comes the sideline. Why'd you three-step in hitch? That's got to be three-step, and the ball's out. You start, you create gray area. And gray area is not good, because now people are not going to be on the same page and you're going to get a blame game going. And so just a reminder that the whole reason Mike McCarthy is here in Dallas to install his little precision passing game is that the precision passing game

got a little old back in the old spot. Yeah, I mean, would you say, I feel like this is stuff that most teams, coaches, offenses have been moving away from, like since Mike McCarthy was in Green Bay, not like, you know, 100%, but this is not the direction the league is going. This isn't like the new thing. This is very much the old thing that even old school coaches are kind of like, all right, maybe we don't have to do it exactly like Bill Walsh anymore because there are different systems in college that players are coming from

and we can allow them a little more freedom in the whole run to green grass, find space, don't run into, you know, a bad look, all these things that we've kind of learned over the years. Would you agree with that's right, right? much so. 100%. Again, there's a real good coach by the name of Andy Reid who does the thing in Kansas City. You might have seen him on your television in February holding a trophy. Andy man, West Coast, right? There was a lot of precision to this. And then got with Patrick Mahomes, got in Kansas City and said, hmm, when Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey just do whatever

they want, we tend to get a first down. What if we kind of loosen the knots on this a little bit? I don't in general mind a zag when everyone else is digging, right? Like, like, that's true. Again, like when it's like nameless and when it's faceless and just like the concept of like, hey, like the whole league meta is going one way. Maybe we try to swing the other way and get some unseen advantages. Once you put a name in a face to it, it's Mike McCarthy. I'm like, okay, I don't know if that's so much a zag when zinging so much is just what he does and what he's always done, right? And so that kind of changes the context a little bit. I was just wondering, are we being too mean to the Cowboys and Mike McCarthy?

And then you ended the segment with that take, which I don't, which I don't disagree with. I mean, to what you were saying earlier, absolutely, you could just picture the story, week six, you know, Dak Prescott, colon, you know, wide receivers need a little more freedom out there or CDLA, you know, like you can just see that. And then Mike McCarthy saying, yeah, that's true. I don't disagree with them, you know, we're going to mix the two. Listen, sometimes you mix stuff and it works great.

Other times you mix stuff and it doesn't work great. I don't think they've earned the benefit of the doubt. I don't think you think they've earned the benefit of the doubt. So we'll see what it looks like. And then the really cool thing is that the, the movement, the river is flowing the exact opposite way in Los Angeles, where Kellynne Moore is now the O.C. Where they left Joe Lombardi, which was like three-step precision, here we go. Like, like, this is as fine of timing as we're going to get to now Kellan.

And you're going to see that offensive change, right? There are so many teams. We're to talk about a couple more of them throughout this, this pod, where like the month of September is going to be so interesting because they're just doing new stuff. And the charges and cowboys are like a perfect example of kind of equal but opposite directions, right? Just like, you know, two lanes of traffic, one going the other way, one going one going one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one way one one going the other way in terms of this like how much freedom do we want to give our quarterback and our receivers. Really cool to see. All right. Speaking of teams that should be pretty interesting in September number two. Quote, there will not be a more diverse harder to defend offense in the

NFC, then the Falcons. This comes from Peter King's football morning in America column. However, this is not just a Peter King take. As you know, I like to call them, the FHS, the Football HIPster Society, is all in on this falcons offense here. And so you will hear a lot of this in the weeks ahead, maybe even on this show. We will see, but there is a lot of hearts. I was first.

I knew them before they were cool. You can find my Falcons 2020. two takes, baby. So there's a lot of hype around the Atlanta Falcons and what this offense can look like here. Ben, I don't know if you would fully agree or disagree with the, there will not be a more diverse harder to defend offense in the NFC than the Falcons, but I think you believe that the hype is warranted. So what do you think about that general storyline that the Falcons are about to kind of

take off and be one of the better, more fun offenses in the NFL. So there's two separate claims. One of the most diverse offenses in the NFL, or the NFC, excuse me, one of the hardest to defend offenses in the NFC. Diverse, I'm almost there, right? Like, in terms of the variety of things that they do in the running game, which is really where I think like a lot of your diversity comes, pretty much everybody does like a lot of things in the passing game.

and even the teams that don't do a lot of things in the passing game do enough and do the things that they do so well that you wouldn't be like, oh, this is too simple. You know what I'm saying? Like, for example, the Eagles had the most simple passing game in the league last year. Was anybody worried about that? Was he going to be like, man, this passing offense is simple? Like, no, it doesn't matter.

But that diversity in the running game is really, really valuable. Because you're able to adjust what you do to the front that you get, into the box town that you get. You're able to change play styles against heavier players and lighter players. You're able to attack a defensive tackle one week, a defensive end the next week, a corner. or safety. Like, diversity in the running game is king.

I don't think the Falcons are more diverse than the lions. They're close. But in general, the Falcons predicate themselves having a very diverse running game. And then the passing game comes off that in the play action. The thing that the Falcons do have in terms of diversity that really, I think nobody else has, is like, I think we're going to see the ball be handed to Bejohn Robinson and Tyler L. Jir and Corderole Patterson and like probably John Huss and Kyle Pitts and Drake London, like, you know, a couple times a year.

And like, the number of players that they're going to get in the backfield that are big, large and dangerous bodies, like that's something that I think nobody else in the league can do, especially now that Greg Roman and the Ravens aren't doing the thing anymore. Like, that's what the Falcons win in terms of diversity.

And when the Falcons won last season, when they had high-scoring games, you could see that being the reason why. Like when they beat up on that Niners defense, it was just like, oh, you like pass rush, you like being fast, that sucks, we're very large. And just they did that for four quarters.

So diversity, I'm there. Hardest to defend. No? Because the Eagles just have too many good players, right? It'd be nice if versatility and diversity was one-to-one with being difficult to defend. I think it would be extremely difficult to prepare for. But I think if you sit down, you go, we like our corner one against Drake London. We like our ability to pressure Jessen Ritter as a young quarterback who can be susceptible to pressure.

to pressure, right? He's not going to, like, destroy us with his legs with his arm strength. You know, like, this is a headache. Sure. Like, we're going to lose to the run game a little bit. Like, they're going to block us and they're going to bully us a little bit. But we got enough here to have answers. Like, yeah, sure, they're a headache on Tuesday to chart, but I don't think they're as dangerous on Sunday as opposed to like, again, the Eagles who like, okay, you just can't solve the AJ Brown plus Jalen Hurts plus Devonti Smith plus Dow's got her problem. Like, there's just not enough personnel to get that done. Yeah, I mean, I have a longer list than that. I mean, now, Eagles, 49, or, or, you know,

Cowboys. Yeah, I was just using like those lions and eagles. Yeah, yeah, examples. Yeah, this is kind of disappointing. I was hoping you were going to go a little bit into like, Sheel, here's why you're wrong about Desmond Ritter in this falcons offense mode and we could have a nice, like, long argument. But I saw you pause before you answered the question where you were like,

do I want to get into this tonight? I'm wet. I was just standing in the rain. I'm on the road in Cleveland. We have a month of content. We're going to fill. Maybe we could do it. on another night.

At any time. I'll just say. Shil, you call me in the middle of the night. I pick up, Sheila, what's okay? Emergency and you go Desmond Ritter is bad.

I will hit you with a Desmond Ritter is good argument so fast and I'll make your head spin and I will be right and I will be vindicated. Yeah, I don't disagree with like, you know, there is a outcome here

where everybody is right, the FHS is right and that this is a fun Falcons offense to watch. They've certainly got fun, some fun skill guys. They've got an offensive. line that should be pretty good. I just feel like this is a forest from the trees type situation

with this Falcons team where there is this assumption that Desmond Ritter is going to at least give you, like I feel like there's an assumption he's going to give you like average starting quarterback play. And I just don't think that that's the most likely outcome. Like it's possible. It's possible he could be amazing. It's possible he could be solid. It's also very possible that he could be bad and below average and that that's going to sink everything that the Falcons want to do. And, you know, in my opinion, that's probably the most likely outcome. I mean, you and I talked to, it was sometime in the offseason where you were saying, well, I trust Arthur Smith and his opinion of Desmond Ritter if he wants to go with him.

And Arthur Smith has been a very good schemer and play caller, no doubt about it. But I kind of go in the other direction where I'm looking at some of the breadcrumbs since he was drafted. Like even when he was drafted, they're taking a linebacker Troy Anderson, 16 picks ahead of him and like not, you know, like, oh, he'll, you know, he'll be there at 70. We can wait till 74. Last year, we all watched Marcus Marietta. I mean, Marcus Marietta was bad last year. And you could see those pictures of Arthur Smith on the sideline where he was just like,

oh, no, this quarterback is killing me. We can win more games if this quarterback doesn't kill me. And they wait until week 15 to go to Desmond Ritter last year. And I would even say this offseason, I mean, this off season, they're handing the keys to Ritter. They give Taylor Heineke a two-year, $14 million deal. Like, that is big-time money for a backup quarter. I mean, back up, look at how many backup quarterbacks are making $7 million per year. So I'm not convinced that they think that Arthur Smith thinks that Ritter is going to be able to give them the quarterback play that they need.

I am lower on this falcons offense than I think the consensus for sure. Again, I see the upside. I think it's possible if they hit and I'm going to be sitting here giving an apology to all the hipsters in like week nine. But I just feel like people have gone way overboard with what this falcons offense is going to be. The Falcons are going to be good. If you wanted this, you should open with this. I thought we were going to answer about like schematics and personnel, whatever. No.

The Heineke thing, don't even try me with the Heinege thing. Anytime you go from being a starter to signing a free agency, you're going to inherently get a little bit of like extra pay, right? The Eagles are paying Marcus Marioo like $5 million per year. And we all saw how he played last year. You just brought that up. Mario took a pay cut, I think. Yeah.

Did Heineke not take a pay cut? I don't know what He was making. I don't know what Heineke is. I'm not looking up Taylor. Listen, on August 7th, I'm not going on over the cap and looking up Taylor Heineke's salary. I'll tell you that.

You're the one who brought up Taylor Heineke, all right? It just has no interest. You have to hedge the Ritter bet because he is absolutely an unknown, right? I think that I've seen Arthur Smith make this style of quarterback. Ritter was very reminiscent to me

of Tanna Hill coming out of college. I've seen him make this sort of quarterback successful. and watching Ritter play in college, I see the tools, the toughness, the velocity, the throw over the middle of the field, they'll throw in a tight window of the anticipation to be good in this sort of an offense.

So the fit makes sense to me. And then watching Ritter play last season, I hoped that they would get Ritter in earlier because I wanted him to get up to speed and I wanted them to push for the division last year. Because last year I was on Falcons are going to be good train. They put him in a week 15. He spends four weeks getting his sea legs under him.

his last film in Week 18 is like, all right, this guy's starting to get. He's getting up to NFL speed. He's hitting windows on time. He's getting plays on time. And it's too late. You've already fallen out of the division. This team was leading the division at the halfway point with Marcus Mariotta. Like, one of the main reasons I'm a Falcons as good guy for 2023 has nothing to do with

Desmond Ritter. It's how good this team was when there was no Desmond Ritter. It's how this team was like a 500 team with Marcus Mariotta all year. So even if Ritter is Mariotta, which I would argue most of his outcomes are better than Marioita. This is still a 500 team. I disagree with that. Dude, Mario daota last year could not play. What are we talking about? I agree. But guys who are drafted where Desmond Ritter is drafted rarely are even competent starters in the NFL. I mean, I was looking this up. Marcus Marioita last year. So he had a dropback success rate of 45.6%. That's middle of the road, a little below

average. How many quarterbacks drafted in the third round or later in the last 15 years have had a dropback success rate as high as Mario da-as did last year? There's five. Dack? Russ, cousins, Dach, Russell, Wilson. I was going to get them all, but you can go. Okay. Jacoby Berset and Nick Folles. Like, those are, that's the last 15 years. Yeah, well, that was, that's for one season, that, that season. And so it's just, again, that just goes back to my point. I feel like we're overrating what the most likely outcome is for someone with Desmond Ritter's pedigree. Maybe I'm going overboard and it doesn't matter that much where he was drafted. Again, he could be good. Even when you were like Ryan Tann... I feel like that's Ryan Tannahill,

I feel like that's Ryan Tannihill was like too high ceiling of a comp or something ridiculous. I wasn't really paying attention. And he was summarily cut off by his own internet, which Comcast or AT&T, I don't play favorites. Whomever Shil's internet ISP is, Internet ISP is redundant. They know that Desmond Ritter will be good and that the Falcons will be good. Keep it in the pod. All right, I'm back.

I take back all of my Falcons takes for those who were not, I mean, what just happened? I'm bad-mouthing Desmond Ritter in that offense. All of a sudden, the storms come down in suburban Pennsylvania, suburban Philadelphia, and we lose power in the Capadia household for about two minutes. I take it back.

Desmond Ritter, all pro season, Arthur Smith, Vince Lombardi, Falcons, 14 and 3. Is that where we left off, Ben? Yeah, you see, you thought it was the hipster football. It's really just like the football priests and priestesses, the high priestesses, the dryads, the controllers of the weather. Yeah, I was worried about storms because it's still raining here, but lo and behold,

it's Pennsylvania we should have been worried about. There you go. So, all right. That was a feeling we're going to talk more about the Falcons, not at NFC South in the weeks ahead. but I think we're obviously on opposite sides with that offense and with that team. Let's take a quick break. We'll get back to some more training camp storyline. Fan Duel has some electrifying news.

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I feel like the rain let up a little bit once I move past the Desmond Ritter takes. Let's see if Todd Munkin or anyone there in Baltimore has the same powers. Here's storyline number three, Ben. This could be a transition year for the Ravens offense. This is from a story from the athletics, Jeff Reback. My friend does a tremendous job covering the Ravens. Now, he didn't say that specific thing,

but he had some great practice notes on kind of what's going on with that Ravens' offense and some of the struggles they've been going through at practice. There was a practice a couple days ago. Lamar Jackson was so frustrated. He punted a football. He tossed his helmet. Mark Andrews thought he should have got a DPI call.

He was so intense. The offensive. He flipped the bird to a referee at training camp. Who does that? I love that. I love that energy. That's a good sign. They had refs out here at Brown's practice for like, it was the second day that since they

had refs my first day out here. And like in the first team period, there was like six plays or the up through five flags and Stefanski went and talked to him. I was like, that's right. Rep it out, Kevin. Get ready for the season. Let him know. there you go.

So Mark Andrews was in mid-season form asking for flags. According to Rebeck, the Ravens offense has struggled to generate big plays downfield. Now they haven't been practicing with J.K. Dobbins or with Rashad Bateman. Todd Munkin, the new offensive coordinator, said, we're not really good right now. We have a long way to go. So my question to you, Ben, is I think a lot of people, myself included, yourself included, looked at this offseason for the Ravens and thought, okay, they are, Great of the wide receivers.

Ooh, they're replacing Greg Roman with Todd Munkin. That's going to be a more exciting passing game. Did we all kind of overrate how quickly this transition was going to happen? Is there a chance that when you have this much turnover with scheme and what you want to do, that there are going to be legit growing pains that might not sink the Raven season, but might have a significant impact on kind of what their expectations might be? No, I am 100% on board with your read there where, like, This is going to take some time.

Whenever I've talked about Baltimore, like I've made it very clear, I think that this move from Greg Roman was so important. I think the move to Todd Monkin is great. I think that there was such a huge challenge when you were moving from one offense to the other to retool the wide receiver room and to walk out of year one of that retooling process with Zayflowers and Odell Beckham, Jr.

I think is a huge win, right? I think that you have a good chance to get a high-impact player out of that gamble, like that duo. You have the chance to get a high-impact player plus, right? you really overachieve. You just solve the Rashad Bateman dart throw, which I think Rashad's such a talented player. He's just struggling to stay healthy,

but when he's on the field, he's been so good. I'm impressed with how they've redone that wide receiver room. Defensively, you saw a great growth over the course of last season. They really settled to a nice place by the end of the year. Kyle Hamilton came out with a great role. They'd get Roquant Smith at the trade deadline. Man, the Ravens look great. But, like, I have so much hype for them.

I have so much excitement for them. Lamar extension, MVP season, but this is just hard. It's so hard, right? It is so, so challenging to get a new offense off the ground in year one, independent of the amount of talent you have. And the Ravens are even operating from a little bit of a talent deficiency because they had a retool wide receiver. That's why when like things like they might make Daniel Dolphins happen as they did last

season, everybody's like, whoa. Like, that's crazy. They just walk out and just doing it. Like it's so hard. Lower practice times. Less time in training camp. Less active preseason. Less stars in the preseason.

Less pads. Less hitting. It's so. hard to really transition things in year one. The Chargers and the Cowboys we already brought up. The Ravens, the Browns, which I've obviously been here at Browns camp and we're going to talk about the Browns for a little bit. Browns moving to a more like spread offense with Deshaun Watson.

Like so many of these teams, you're just going to look at them in September and go like, okay, you're two and two. This hasn't been pretty. This hasn't been perfect. What's working? What's not working? Who can figure out where to put the dials? What switches to flick on?

What switches to leave off? Like the exact way. this offense look, who's going to be able to figure this out over that first month of the season, and then actually pick up momentum, October and November, be really good in December. I still have a lot of faith in the Ravens. I still think the Ravens can win the division. They have to get lucky on a few of those things to do so, but they're a very high-ceiling team. It's a matter of okay, when pads are on a hit in his live in September, how quickly are you going to be able to make these transitions, how quickly you're able to problem solve, right? The problems that you

encounter in this offense are going to be the first time you've ever encountered them, right? Like you're going to start using Zayflowers a certain way. And then maybe realize mid-October, always use them differently. Same thing is true with Odell. Like, all the problems are going to be new, right? So it's just so much uncertainty. There's so much pitfalls and booby traps and just like things to figure out, which is such a cool thing to see from the outside. It's very exciting and very interesting. But in terms of win loss, like, yeah, you might hit week six, week seven and be like, shoot, like, we're still around 500. We have a tough slate coming up. We didn't get this plane off the ground fast enough.

Yeah, I generally agree with that. I think this is a team that actually they can win games, even if the offense isn't, you know, hitting on all cylinders. Which is big. Through the first half of the season with their defense, with their special teams. And if Jackson's on the field, like his legs just set such a high floor. Like they're not just taking his legs, you know, out of the equation.

They want to fix the passing game. But the way he runs the football where, you know, maybe we'll go down as the most dynamic running quarterback in NFL history, that should set a certain floor for you. But I also do buy that this transition is going to be tricky. And like, if I were like Greg Roman's, you know, college buddies or siblings or whatever, I'd be like, oh, you know, okay, let's see how this goes. You know, this, he could easily make the case. When I had Lamar Jackson hit on the field, even in the last three years, so this isn't even counting his MVP year.

When Lamar Jackson's been on the field, the Ravens offense has performed with the sixth best offense in the NFL in terms of EPA per play. Now, a lot of that is Jackson is a dynamic player who can make something out of nothing and put an offense on his back at times. And we all saw that. Our eyes didn't lie to us. But at the same time, you know, in the building, they were playing a certain way. Like if John Harbaugh, John Harbaugh obviously wasn't convinced a year ago that they needed to make some type of dynamic change or he would have made a dynamic change with the coaching staff or with the offense. So, you know, I think there's going to definitely be some growing pains. Even with the wide receivers, like a month ago, I'm like, oh, my gosh.

easily best, you know, wide receiver group, Lamar Jackson's ever played with. And now I'm kind of like, well, Rashad Bateman's still not on the field. O'Dell Beckham Jr. turns 31. I still like him, but he turns 31. Zay Flowers, you know, rookie wide receivers can kind of be hit or miss. So there's just so much variance to this group. I think if you're a Ravens fan, you say, hey, let's get through like September, maybe October in the mix.

Our defense and special teams carrying us a little bit. And they're a team that you want like Thanksgiving after Thanksgiving to put together that stretch where all of a sudden the end of December, all this, the team, nobody wants to play. Look at what this offense has figured it out. They're on fire. Lamar Jackson is healthy. I sort of feel like that is probably the, I don't know if I want to say best case scenario, but like realistic, good scenario if you're a Ravens fan. I don't think it's the best case. Like I think there's a way they walk out in the field and they just are sick on offense. And the reason I believe that is because I'll scream it from the mountaintops so I die.

Lamar's like a really good thrower, right? So there's a chance that a really good thrower gets to throw the ball a lot in an offense with a couple of good receivers in it. And all of a sudden, the rapist offense is just good because that very simple mathematics right there. But in general, yeah, there's going to be a ramp up. And honestly, that's one of the reasons why I really like Lamar for MVP. It's a ticket that I bought earlier in the season is because we typically see that the guy was leading the MVP race in week seven does not win it in week 18. Right. Like, it's a narrative award. And so late pushes can be a valuable part of the, a valuable part of the voting process. And So I still have a lot of faith in the Ravens.

It's just we don't want to be pressing big red buttons and alarm bells, week three, week four, if they're still figuring out exactly what they are. The final factor in this that I forgot to bring up, but it's still critical is, Ain't no J.K. Dobbins at camp right now. And it's not like JK is like a high tier, like tier A running back, like they're missing like a Jonathan Taylor or Josh Jacobs. But he's still the best back they got. And as you move away from the Greg Roman offense,

the back that you have back there becomes more important, like the talent he has, because it's just, there's going to be less like, and two defenders chased Lamar Jackson away on the option, and that like simplifies things who are running back. And the talent at back matters a little bit more, and they have no J.K. Dobbins. And I love Todd Monkin. He's a funny guy. He's just an old crotchety coach. It's a great, great, great, great thing to be. And he got asked a couple days ago, like, how long will it take J.K. Dobbins to like ramp up and get up to speed when he gets out here? and Todd was like, I don't know because he's not out here.

How long will take from him to get up to speed? There's no way of knowing. We have no idea where he is. We don't even know what speed he's currently at, which is a good way of emphasizing. Like this team might be for the first few weeks of the season, handing the ball off to Gus Edwards slash Melvin Gordon slash J.K. Dobbins still trying to learn the playbook.

And so there's another just opportunity for a few weeks of chaos to kind of slow the Ravens start out of the gate, and then they pick up steam as the season goes on. Yeah, the running back with Lamar, like you're going to be in a very friendly environment, especially I think their offensive line, I think is really good. So a good offensive line, running a quarterback who can run and be a threat in the run game,

it's a good spot to be. But I think the back there can kind of, you want him to be just like an elevator, like an explosive turning, you know, a 12-yard gain into a 40-yard gain, that type of back. And I think J.K. Dobbins has that in him to be that kind of. it back when he's healthy. So I would agree with that for sure. All right. Number four. This is from a

young up-and-coming football mind. I would describe him. I believe the name is the, Benjia. I think this is a guy, Benjamin Solek. Solick? Is it pronounced Solick as every single person who's ever brought me on the radio thinks it is? I think that's the guy who puts his like thermostat at 60 degrees. The one who tweeted out Loins when he thought he had news to break. Yeah, one. Yeah, yeah, that's the guy. He says the offense plans on throwing a lot of passes. He was at Lions Camp, by the way. The Lions offense plans on throwing a lot of passes to Sam LaPorta, and he caught everything in his vicinity. So I guess the storyline would be Sam Laporta, the lion's rookie tight end, is going to be a monster in his rookie season because now I'm not, I don't know if that's

exactly what Solac meant, but I'm going to make that leap a little bit because listen, that Lions offense, you look at it, there's a lot to like. You like the offensive line. You like how Jared Gough played last year. You like Ben Johnson. You like Amman Ross St. Brown. However, I do look at it and I go, who else is going to catch passes for this group? So I don't know if you're familiar with this Solax work, but what do you think about Leporta and just speaking candidly? I thought this would be a way for you to fire off some takes about the lines and we can talk about them as well. I think, like, I treat it about Leporta because that's the exciting thing in August. It's fantasy football draft time.

It's however the rookies looking time. And really, like, golf won't stop throwing the ball to Leporta. And Leporta is catching everything. And it is cool to see. But the lead that's buried there is that right now, if you made me guess the lion's top three target getters, based off of watching three days of practice and hearing how the offensive coordinator

and the offensive staff talks about the offense, during the six weeks in which Jameson Williams is out, I would guess one is Amon Ross St. Brown, which is not a surprise. and is good. That's great. That's the way it should be. I would guess two is the second round rookie tight end out of Iowa, Samuel Porto. And I would guess three is Alabama running back to Muir Gibbs, which just as an offense in general,

you do not want your three primary targets to go wide receiver, tight end, running back. You generally would like that to go like wide receiver, wide receiver, wide receiver, kind of depending on how you built it. If you are going to go wide receiver slash tight end slash running back, you'd like to be the Niners where you know that George Kittle is what he is. and you know Christian McCaffrey is what he is, right? Like you, there's some certainty, right? As opposed to Leporta and Gibbs in which you think you've got some talented players

and you think you're going to be able to use them at the NFL at a high level, but there's a lot of projection there. The Lions entering the 2022 season didn't really 100% know what they were going to be on offense just yet. It was the first year of Ben Johnson, but they knew they wanted to improve the depth in the wide receiver room. And they wanted to elevate the talent there as well. And so they spent that top 10 pick on Jameson, or excuse me, top 12 pick on Jameson Williams, up for whom they traded, right?

They moved up from 32 to 12 and a move that like a lot of people were ready for to go and get that guy, right? Jameson obviously missed a lot of the rookie season with the injury, as was expected. But now to miss these six games on a gambling suspension puts a little bit more uncertainty in that. Jameson's also at a tough camp. He's had a lot of drops. He's had some mistakes. And Dan Campbell gave a quote where he was like, yeah, you know, he's never going to be an elite catcher. He just got to continue to work.

And it was kind of one of those things you would tell Dan Campbell's just talking. Like Dan's just like thinking about football players and like where their skills are and where their skills aren't and how he's going to use them. But like in the room, it wasn't like, oh yeah, Dan's just like, you know, he's an elite speed guy.

It's not an elite hands guy. Like I'm just thinking about my player. In the room it was, Dan just said that Jameson Williams is never going to be good at catching the football. And that was the headline. And like Brad Holmes had to get on the radio and like clarify it and everything.

But there's no doubt that Jameson's having a rough camp is going to miss the first six weeks. And so the Lions, right now. We're in a weird spot. This was a top five offense by EPA last year. This like, Jerry Goff looks as talented as good as he's ever looked. Like, Ben Johnson as a great OC. I got a piece on Ben coming out later this week. Like, there are a lot of incredibly good offensive vibes right now in Detroit. The elephant in the room is that their second receiver is either Josh Reynolds or Marvin Jones. Their third receiver is Khalif Raymond.

Like, Alman Ra doesn't even need to like, like actually miss time with an injury. If he just like need someone to retie his shoelaces, the lions are not really moving the football through the air until he gets back on the field. And that's a really scary and fragile place for what we expect to be a really high-powered offense to be. And so it's great that Leporto looks good. It's great that Gibbs looks good. But Detroit's got a wide receiver problem. And they did a great job painting around it in year one. But that's a really hard thing to sustain. And I don't think they want to be in that spot where they're sustaining it. So we'll see how well this past game can work when it runs through a slot receiver and two rookies, but neither of whom play receiver. It's a weird spot to be.

Yeah, wide receiver too. You mentioned Marvin Jones, Josh Reynolds. Caliph Raymond last year had over 600 yards. He's still... Here's the thing about Caliph. Let me tell you about Caliph real quick. I really like him. I like him so much. He's such a good. The numbers are kind of good on Caliph. He was 24th in yards per out run last year out of 107 wide receivers. Right. I love him. He's an extremely hard worker, he's tough. The Lions, by like the second half of the year, on third down, defenses would put like nine dudes on Amon Ra. Because you got to. He's unbelievable move in the six. And the lions would just use him on Ra's bait. And they would, Khalif was like their stick mover, right? Kleeves was like the guy to trust on third and six in a top spot. Really cool to see for a player was

was bouncing around on practice squads. But it's, it's always that thing where like once a guy was bouncing around on practice squads finds a huge role in your offense, you got to ask, okay, how much of it was him, which a good portion of it was, Cleet's like I says, a hard work. has got talent and how much of it is just the reality of my offense. It's like Isaiah Hodgins with the Giants last year. Like why did Isaiah Hodgins break out with New York when he couldn't break out in Buffalo? Some of it has to do with Isaiah Hodgons. Some of it has to do with the wide receiver room in New York. There's that there's that availability aspect of it. It's a big question for them. Like I come back to it and say, well, it's not like that great talent last year and they

figured it out and made it work. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work again. So I'm having trouble, honestly, with my sort of, what do I think the Lions are going to do in 2023 takes, which again, we'll do a bunch of predictions here in the weeks ahead. But I like the offensive coordinator, Ben Johnson, the offensive line's going to be healthier. I like them. They made it work last year with the pieces they had. And then I'm looking at it going to if I just like looked at the talent here on paper, it's not in the same class as some of the top offenses in the NFL. Yet it performed that way last year. Just one thing on the porta and all rookie tight ends.

like it's just hard. It's really hard for rookie tight ends to put up any kind of numbers. Yeah, I really feel like a wet blanket on this episode. By the way, am I always a wet blanket? Is she? Wow. I feel like I'm just telling you why no team's going to be. All right, I'm always a wet blanket. I'm always a wet blanket. I think you and players. We should do a credible line. In this particular context for the first time ever. So you're saying, remember when I was like, I like Todd Monkin so much because he's a crotchety old man? Yeah, why do you think you and I are pals? Listen, I take that We should do a whole show where

this thing She'll likes. Maybe we'll do that. Here are six things that She'll actually likes. That's a great, that's a great like come back from commercial bit where it's like, hey, I'm begging for this ads, we're back, Sheel and Ben. By the way, I'm a fan of pizza and pop music. Just like establishing that there's like a couple of things you're cool with.

But the rookie tight end point is well taken. And one thing I'd say of Leporta moves great up there, caught everything in his vicinity looks awesome. He's small. Like he's small for a tight end. Like he is listed like 6, 3, 2, 45. He is not a big tight end. These lions tight ends used to be big, right?

Like they put James Mitchell out there, Shane Zilcher who got hurt, Brock Wright. These are big dudes. And they ask these guys to block. And so like when Leport is out there, I think he's going to get thrown the ball a lot. There's a world in which they stick Leport out there a lot in the early weeks of the season. And then they start to see some numbers of the running game when he's out there versus when James Mitchell and Brock Ryder out there. And they go, uh-oh, this might need to be a little bit more of a package deal. Laporta puts a lot of effort to block

in them, he's from Iowa. So he's good. It's just like he's got size limitations and that might affect his snap counts. Last 10 years, 27 tight ends taken in the first two rounds. What do you think their average production is as rookies? 27. Last 10 years,

27 tight ends taken in the first two rounds. I have the average and I have the median. So whichever one you want to give me. Of total receiving yardage? Yeah, I have. Catches, receiving yards, and touchdown. So if you want to give me all of them, go ahead. 36 catches for 400 receiving yards and 3.5 touchdowns.

Pretty good. The median is actually 36 catches on the dot. So that's a nice job out of you. You know me. You know me just got to figuring out medians. Now you had a little bit, you were a little too high on the yards per reception, though, Benjamin. Oh, yeah, tight end death. The target is shallow, yeah.

Yeah. So the median season was actually Irv Smith, 36 catches for 3.5. 311 yards and two touchdowns. That's the median season. Again, average production is 29 catches for 339 and 2.6 touchdowns. Only three tight ends in that group. One in nine, three out of 27, one in nine, about 11 percent, had even 500 receiving yards as rookies.

That was Kyle Pitts, Evan Ingram, and Noah fan. So this isn't just a Sam Laporta. I was going to say tweet. Sam Laporta settled down take from me. supplies to the bills in Dalton Kincaid and the Raiders and Michael Maher and the Packers and Luke Musgrave and the Cowboys and Luke Schoonmaker. Did I pronounce that right, Schoonmaker? Yeah, Scrooemaker.

It's just hard. It's just hard for rookie tight ends. It doesn't mean none of them are going to pop. One of them could pop. Two of them could pop. Three of them could pop. But if we just look at it historically, it's a tough position to come in and really be a good pass-catching threat right away.

All right. Let's take one quick break. We'll get to a couple more narratives and then the extra point taken. All right, we are back on extra point taken. Number five, Gino Smith will be even better in 2023. I got to say, this is another one I'm really struggling with. I'm not going to fence it for all of August. I will have a firm take on some of these, but these are the ones I'm struggling with me.

That's why I put them on the list. This is from the athletics, Michael Sean Dugar, another great reporter. And my friend out there in Seattle does a tremendous job. he had this story with D.K. Metcalf, Pete Carroll, all talking about kind of what's different with Gino this summer. And D.K. Metcalf says, the rain's loosened up on Gino. He's not worried about being perfect out there. He can go out there and play freely. Gino is throwing apparently more interceptions in practice, taking more chances. Hell yeah. Being more aggressive. Now, I always thought it was funny because, like, Pete Carroll has a way of explaining things where

you're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. And then like, like, when I was, was in Seattle. Then I would go back to my computer and be like, wait, what did he say? How do I? So, like, he's always like, I want my quarterbacks to hit explosive plays downfield and not turn the ball over. It's like, yeah, every coach wants that. That's a heart needle to thread, Pete. But Russell Wilson did it for a long time. And that's obviously what he wants from Gino Smith. Like Pete Carroll, even when he was run heavy, he didn't want a dick and dunk passing game ever. He was like, if we can hit bombs downfield, I want to hit bombs downfield. That has always been his mentality.

So Gino here, age 33 in October, was very good last year, has another pass-catching weapon in Jackson Smith and Jigba. Where are you on the idea that Gino Smith might play a little more loose this year? And that will be a good thing. And he'll be better in 2023 than he was in 2022. First thing, I would say the number one way to describe me as a quarterback is that I create explosive plays downfield without turning the ball over. That's just my style of play.

Other guys different way. Nice job. So I run it. Absolutely, Gino's going to be more loose in camp this year. Camp interceptions are great, like, or bad. I don't know. They're not real whenever it's like there have been picks. Like, okay, in the Ravens case where they threw nine picks in one practice,

that's a little bit like, okay, what's going on? But generally, training camp picks or whatever, you know what I'm saying? You're testing windows. You're trying to learn like the timing of things and you're trying to give receivers chances. Like it's not real. It's practice. You're allowed to try stuff. Yeah, I'll say this.

Let me know if you agree with this. as a training camp observer, nothing grinds my gears more than the quarterback who will not throw the football in team drills and takes off and scrambles when you cannot get hit.

You're not giving any of your teammates work. Everyone hates this. Why are you doing this? Yes, this is a Marcus Mario to sub-tweet. All right, continue, Ben Solace. I have two phrases. One, grip it, two, rip it. This is training camp, baby.

Let's do the thing. I couldn't agree more. I should have a ball. on the sideline where if you don't throw it, I get to throw the ball at you, then that's the deal. And I throw down field and I don't turn the ball over. So that's, you know, what I'm dealing with. In general, I think that, like, the Seahawks offense works. They have great weapons and Gino is a well-developed and mature quarterback. Like, he knows where his bread is buttered. He knows how to, he's very, very good from the gun. He's very good from empty and check.

And he'll take his one-on-ones. Like, I remember that, that, do that Saints game in terms of like throwing down the field, but like doing it judiciously and in the right moments and hitting the windows. He's got the goods in these regards. Gino's always going to be a high interception quarterback. Like I always like to think of the Adam Harstad of, I think it's fantasy life has the three stools of quarterback. The three-legged stool of quarterbacking play. You're either like are a high interceptions guy, a high sack guy, or a high throwaway slash low A dot guy. Like you're going to, something about you is going to be bad, like I said at the beginning of the show, right? Like all quarterbacking is either good or bad.

You have to have some aggressiveness somewhere. It's like you hold onto the ball for a long time and try to make plays where you test windows down field and you throw a lot of picks. Like there's there's always going to be an aspect of your play. It's more stylistic than anything else. And Juno's always going to be like a high interception attack windows guy. Last year, learning a new offense, fighting for Drew Locke for the starting job, you're probably trying to keep the horse on the reins a little bit, trying to keep everything in check.

This year, off a nice extent. feeling like a playoff team. You're smelling, you're taking a whiff a little bit, right? You're feeling yourself a little bit. You're not going to care as much about what you're doing training camp. I don't think it means Gino's going to be any better or any worse this upcoming year. Like, that's a very hard target to hit. I agree.

That's a hard thing to figure out now in August. It just means that Gino's playing. Gino's shooting. Gino's doing the thing in training camp that he should be doing as a starting quarterback, throwing the ball around the yard. Yeah, I agree with you for training camp. When I look at the season, it's just you can make the case both ways that one, Gino Smith has only only did it for one year.

He turns 33 in October. I don't know if you like the turnover worthy plays metric from pro football focus, but they try to put into like, hey, these were dropped interceptions. He ranked 28th out of 35 quarterbacks in that last year so you could make the case, hey, he did get a little lucky last year. And then you can make the case that you just did that. Hey, he was fighting for a job last summer. He was playing with two rookie tackles who are now in their second year.

Oh, by the way, they added Jackson Smith and Jigba to a group that already includes D.K. Metcalf and Tyler Lockett, like Gino Smith's going to be just fine. So it's a tough one. It really could go either way. He throws a beautiful deep ball, so the more he can throw the ball downfield, the better, especially with those weapons.

They're going to get some really favorable matchups, but continue to wonder what kind of season we're going to get from Gino Smith. All right. Number six, we switched this one up. Benny Souls, you have a number six for us. I don't even know what the narrative or the storyline is going to be. So you hit me with this one for our last one. And then we will get to your extra point taken.

Yeah. So good old Greg Rosenthal of NFL Network, Greg with two G's, put together his like training 60% G. Yeah, 60% G Greg over there. Put together his like just a basically huge training camp notebook of like, I've been reading all the reports from the beatwriters. Like these are things that are standing out to me. And there was a note that he had that I did not hear because I did not have the volume

on the broadcast of the Hall of Fame game that I thought was really interesting. Greg said, I found Chris Collinsworth's words on Deshawn Watson during the Hall of Fame game eye opening. And here's the quote, it's going to be paramount on Watson to be patient. I'm not sure that Cleveland Browns can make as bold a jump as what he probably would like to see. Spread offences. Let me take advantage of my ability to run and make plays all over the field. Do I see Cleveland doing that? Maybe.

But it's a pretty big leap for them. Colsworth continued, if it does work, the Browns could be a factor. If they get out there and there's a decision whether to run it or throw it, yeah, we want to do this. We paid just on all this money. We pay the receivers all this money. But what we do best is run the football, that's when it starts to get uncomfortable. The number one thing that you notice out here at Browns Camp last two days is

there's a lot of receivers here. They didn't have this many receivers a couple years ago with Kevin Sophanckey. They had a lot of tight ends. We were going under center. We were playing 13 personnel. We were blocking. You got out here, Marty Cooper,

Donovan People's Jones, Elijah Moore, David Bell, Cedrick Tillman, Marquis Goodwin, Jakee Grant, Jalen Darden. You got everybody out.

There are so many. any receivers at this camp. And when they line up and run team, they're in the gun. They're an 11 personnel, right? Nick Chubb's been getting questions all month long about like, hey, what's different about running from the gun versus running under center? Because it is, it is different. Now, Chubb's numbers as a runner, if you go and you look like last year, like it's like, oh, 4.2, 4.5 yards per carry from under center, six yards per carry from the gun. It looks great, but it's a really small sample size. And in general, Chubb was running well from the gun because defenses would see them under center and be like, run, Chubb's going to kill us.

This is terrifying. And then they'd go to shotgun and the defense would be the sigh of relief and be like, oh, thank God, they're not doing that. Multiple side ends and they're running and they're pulling outside zone and chub and everything. And they would take guys out of the box and you could sneak up on them with a gun run. But in general, we see that under center runs are more effective. And so by lining up and being on 11 personnel team, three receivers, by choosing to bring all these wide receiver bodies in and critically, like there's no like Alan Lazzard

in this group. There's no Robert Woods in this group like, oh, it's quasi-12 personnel and he can block. Like, maybe that's David Bell. He is a good blocker, but Bell's not a super great receiver right now. And so, like, I don't know if you want him on the field over Elijah Moore and over Marquisca when it's tricky, right? So when you have all these receivers and you're going shotgun, you are making it harder on chubbed around the football. Both he and like the running backs coach and and Stefanski, they're all trying to claim like, oh, no, it's fine. It's just the same. But it is and it's more challenging when you live in out of shotgun. And you're putting a lot of chips in on the Deshawn Watson table and saying we're going to spread and shred. We're going to be a pass

heavy team, which is just not what the Browns had been previously under Stafansky and with Nick Chubb in the room. So it's a similar conversation of the one we have with the Ravens. It's less dramatic because the offensive coordinator didn't change, but the offensive philosophy absolutely is changing in Cleveland where they are going to throw the football more and throw it more from the spread and try to fit this around Deshaun Watson's skill set. And I thought, I think Callsworth makes a great point. They're going to have to be patient and acknowledge that this isn't going to be neat. there's going to be times or it's going to really, really feel like they have to go back to Honor Center, multiple tight ends, hand the ball off to Nick Chubb.

And I won't, you don't know if they should do that or if they should try to like endure those temptations and really get this plane off the ground, get this ship sailing in this new look offense. And so Cleveland quietly, less so than like the Chargers with Kellynne Moore and the Ravens with Ton Monkin, they are still undergoing an offensive evolution of their own that I think it's important to highlight. And as we talked about on our last episode at the end of last week, there's more pressure. They don't have the Ravens timeline of, hey, let's start feeling good about ourselves in November. And then, hey, if we, you know, make the playoffs, but don't make a run, we'll feel good going into the next season.

Like, it has to work this year. And it's, and if you're the coach, Kevin Stefansky, I mean, I remember interviewing him a couple of years ago at Brown's camp about his offensive philosophy. And the entire base was how to marry the run in the past game. Like that's at the core of what Kevin Stephansky believes about offensive football. And that's different than what Deshaun Watson excelled in when he was with Houston. And so if you're Stefansky, it's like your job with a Baker Mayfield or Jacoby Brousset, where you're trying to put them in position to succeed and maximize their talents, is different than your job with Deshaun Watson, who wants to play a certain way.

And as we said, it's the most powerful person in the organization other than the owner. So yeah, he's in a tough spot. it's what we said with the Cowboys. Sometimes when you're trying to mix two things, it works really well, and you end up with something great. Other times you do it, and there are these battles, and there's going to be egos. And Deshawn Watson obviously wants to prove

that he's still one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL after the way last season went, and he hasn't been on the field as a great quarterback in what, three years once we get to week one. So yeah, that offense is certainly going to be an interesting one to watch. All right, Benjamin, hit us with your extra point. taken as we close out the show. What do you got? All training, this has been a training camps reports podcast, right?

Been about, hey, factor fiction, Juno is going to be better throwing more picks. Factor fiction, Lions passing game, Factor Fiction, Ravens transition year, Factor Fiction, whatever the first one we did was, Falcon stuff. I can't remember. We should have framed it Factor Fiction, Ben, or by yourself. No one's ever done that before on like a TV segment or radio show or a podcast. Right.

Now, throw out all of this. Judicious judgment. That's redundant. All this shrewd and balanced and shield sitting on on fences and being a wet blanket. Toss it all out of the window. For our seventh training camp report and the extra point taken. Anthony Richardson's stack and practices, baby.

Anthony Richardson's looking real solid in Indianapolis. Every report I read out of Colts training camp is taking all the first team reps. We ain't doing no Gardner Minshue. Like down in Houston, they're like, oh, on CJ Stroud or Davis Mills. Who could it be? It's Davis Mills.

right. I don't even know who the backup is. Oh, C.J. Stroud's got to earn the first team reps. Crazy. None of that in Indy. Anthony Richardson's getting every first team rep. Every report you're at a practice. Richardson had a mistake here and the procedural penalty and missed one. Oh, baby, he ripped a couple. Oh, baby, when he moves.

Oh, velocity. Alec Pierce says it's different. Zaire Franklin says he's getting better every single week. Shane Steichen says it's incredible at how quickly he's learning the offense. I, dude, how cool would it be a lot of, if Richardson was just good, if he was just great right away. How sick? It would be obnoxious. It'd be so annoying that the Colts went for five years screwing around a quarterback, got rewarded with this. That would bother me. But other than that, how cool would it be if Anthony Richardson's

just straight good? Awesome training camp reports out of Indy. I'm going there next week. I'm so excited to see him play. All right, well, we'll definitely touch on it. It will be a lot of fun. I mean, his, I think I said this going back to draft season. Like, if you just watch a highlight his 25 best plays. You're like, holy cow, this is a special player. I think he's got a real chance. Do I need to add the show on a wet blanket thing, or should I just shut up?

Shield, sure, sure, sure, sure. I just said, no wet blankets. I'm always no wet blankets. Okay, all right, we'll talk about the colds on it. I'm just saying, when you're expecting it, you're not expecting, but I can't help myself. He's 21 years old. He's at 13 college starts.

He completed 54% of his passes last year. Actually, it usually doesn't get easier when you get to the NFL. And what any of this have to do with the fact that the cults have the worst core of that group potentially in the entire NFL? All right. That has been. This is my analysis on your analysis. My response is just a long, impassioned.

I am old. I am not capable of change at this point in my life. I am who I am. I swear I like things. I like players. I like teams. Do your daughters want to be? what it's like to have fun?

Do they ask their friends? Like, does your dad play games with you? That sounds cool. That's true. Yeah. As I've told you before, my wife will tell me something. I'll have no response and chill. Do you get excited about anything?

What's wrong with you? Shake me. So listen, again, this is who I am. This wasn't exactly the episode where I highlighted things I like, players, teams, coaches, etc. Tune in next week for things she'll like. Yeah. You promise we're going to do it. It's August 7th.

It's August 7th. We have a long way to go. we'll get to things that I like for sure. All right, that was a fun episode. Thank you to Cliff Augustine for producing. Thank you to Ben Solac, additional production supervision by Connor and Evans and Arjuna, Ram Gopal. Thanks to everyone for listening to Extra Point Taken on the Ringer NFL feed.